Copying files and making directories

[Richard Cooper]

I'm working on a project that includes a lot of making directories and
copying files.

I have the following problems:
My makefiles are quite large and unwieldy.
A make run will typically spend time copying already up-to-date files.
A make run will typically log lots of failed (but ignored) calls to 'mkdir' 

Writing explicit rules to avoid the last 2 problems would make the makefiles
even bigger.

I think I would like to be able to express the following rules.

1) To build anything that is a directory, mkdir it.

2) Anything that is a directory is dependant on its parent directory

3) This is a generalisation of (2): Anything that has a path in its name
depends on that path, i.e. A/B/foo.c is dependant on A/B/

4) If A is dependant on B and they have the same filenames but different
paths then A is build by copying B to A

Are these possible to express? If they are any help with writing them would
be gratefully received.

Cheers,

Rich